Wow! That's great you were able to get this 1995 Beat CD of UNA TOMBA APERTA ... UNA BARA VUOTA.

I'm sure you realize that the first 12 tracks on this album are not from a score by Piccioni. Don't know how much more music Piero wrote for this item, but this is one of those titles mentioned for a possible expansion from Beat.

Hope that ajhfsm will be mesmerized by this Piccioni fave of mine!

If you can ever acquire a copy of IL FARO IN CAPO AL MONDO, then you'd have all of my Top 10 Piccioni.

Yes, a bit disappointed since I was waiting for this one, and I don't like so much the next batch, but still, I don't think there is a deadline to release the Piccioni albums; they might as well do it in the next two years.

Did Piccioni choose the films he scored or was it more a matter of survival? I wonder.

Certainly not a matter of survival at the time of the late 60s or early 70s. Piccioni worked very closely with some directors like Rosi or Sordi for a long time because they were his friends, and therefore he composed the music for almost everything they made. But he was asked to do many pictures by other directors and producers at that time, some of which he even had to refuse because he had no time or simply did not like the movie or the script beforehand. He also liked the variety of movies and the variety of music. Matters did change however enormously during the early 80s with the crisis of the Italian cinema when there was only a restricted budget for the music anymore - directors and producers didn't want to pay for an orchestra anymore - and a new generation of filmmakers came up which had their own group of younger composers. So this was the reason why Piccioni scored fewer and fewer movies during the 80s. It was not his own choice to score fewer pictures at that time.